Soraya has three children. Arsalan is the second, and the one she felt the closest to. “We led a difficult life financially,” she explained. “I worked at factories and sometimes had to take night shifts. Arsalan helped me with money. After school, he worked at car repair shops, made his own allowance, and helped buy some of the things his sisters needed.”

Amir Aslan holding his little sister. He is in his late teens in this picture

Arsalan became obsessed with bodybuilding around the age of 16. He liked the sport because it helped him gain strength and could ultimately help him make money. “He had a coach who told him he needed to complete an international course. That way, he would be able to take part in tournaments and also have trainees of his own.”

In the early 2000s, Soraya’s beloved son travelled to Turkey at 20 years old to get the certification. There, he met an Iranian man who owned a factory in Germany. In reality, however, the man was an undercover Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) agent, looking to recruit new members for the terrorist organization.

“Arsalan called me one day, saying he’d changed his plans,” Soraya remembered. “He said he’d met a wealthy factory owner who offered him a well-paying job in Germany. He said the man promised he could bring me and his sisters to Europe after a few years.”

The Istanbul hotel where Arsalan was staying also housed many other Iranians. The MEK agent had strategically placed other group members around the hotel to vouch for the supposed factory owner, portraying him as a generous and philanthropic individual to those he was targeting.

Soraya sent a significant amount of money to Turkey to cover her son’s travel expenses to Germany. “The man who claimed he was taking him to Europe even spoke to me on the phone while Arsalan was still in Turkey,” she recounted. “He said the money I’d sent wasn’t enough, but that he’d still take Arsalan and deduct the remaining amount from his salary.”
Arsalan called his mother shortly after to say goodbye. Then, he vanished.
“I was worried sick every day. I couldn’t believe I had lost contact with my son so easily and had no way of reaching him. It was a living nightmare.”

It took Arsalan three years to contact his mother again. He told Soraya that he had been staying in a refugee camp in Germany where no means of communication existed, but that he was now out and about, living a good life, and training dozens of athletes at a gym he owned.
“He gave me a German number and said we could now keep in contact regularly,” Soraya stated. The number turned out to be a fake.

Four years outside hell’s gates

It wasn’t until 2008 or 2009 that Soraya discovered the truth about her son. The supposed factory owner Arsalan had met hadn’t taken him to Germany at all; instead, he’d taken him to Iraq. And not just anywhere in Iraq, but to Camp Ashraf: the desolate and secluded headquarters of the MEK, holding over 5,000 individuals. Some had entered the camp willingly, while others, like Arsalan, had been abducted and dragged there.
“I found out about my son’s fate through a distant relative of my sister-in-law, who had left the MEK and returned to Iran. He knew me, so he looked for me and let me know what had happened to Arsalan.”

Back then, Soraya didn’t know much about the MEK. She recalled hearing their name on television in the 1980s when they were carrying out terrorist attacks in Tehran, but at 18, she was too focused on her new married life to pay much attention. Even after learning that Arsalan had been taken by the MEK, she naively imagined they lived relatively normal lives within the general population. The reality of the situation only became clear when an association founded by former MEK members took her and other families whose children had been abducted to Iraq. Their goal was to shout their children’s names outside Camp Ashraf, hoping they would hear them and attempt to escape.

Former US Vice President Mike Pence addresses the MEK at the Ashraf-3 camp in Albania on June 23, 2022

“We crossed into Iraq through the Mehran border in western Iran. I can’t truly describe the emotions I felt when we reached what was essentially a desert. People pointed to these horrifying concrete blocks and said, ‘That is Ashraf.'”
As previously reported by the Tehran Times, those inside the camp were virtually cut off from the outside world. Mobile phones were forbidden, TV watching was restricted, and computer use was limited to assigned tasks. Relationships were tightly controlled as well. The group’s leader, Masoud Rajavi, forced all couples within the camp to divorce, separated children from their parents, and claimed all remaining women as his own wives. He mandated daily sessions where everyone was forced to confess their “sins” and reaffirm their loyalty to Rajavi and his agenda.

Soraya stayed outside Camp Ashraf for four years. She and other families of abductees lived in harsh conditions alongside the Iraqi Army stationed nearby. Food was scarce, clean water was unavailable, and maintaining hygiene was a constant struggle. But Soraya persevered despite the hardships. She and the others would set up loudspeakers around the camp, shouting their children’s names into microphones, hoping to reach them. Of course, none of their children were ever allowed to approach the gates. Occasionally, some of the higher-ranking MEK members would come out to hurl insults, rocks, and pieces of scrap metal at them.

Soraya was eventually forced to return to Iran for surgery after her back got severely injured in one of these attacks. By the time she returned to Iraq, her son had been moved to a new MEK camp in Albania.

“We tried to do the same thing in Albania. Back then, Albania still had an embassy in Iran. I went there with a few other mothers to apply for visas, but we were all denied without any explanation. Every time we tried after that, the result was the same,” she said, tears starting to stream down her face.

According to information obtained by the Tehran Times, the new camp in Albania—set up for the MEK with U.S. coordination—is run under the same harsh and inhumane conditions as the one in Iraq. People there are stripped of their freedom and identity, forced to work long hours every day, and face severe punishments, even death, if they don’t follow orders.

Tirana snapped its diplomatic ties with Tehran in 2022, under the alleged influence of the United States and Israel, the two biggest supporters of the MEK. Albanian police even raided Iran’s diplomatic premises when the diplomats were not in the building.

Betrayed also by international rights bodies and Western states

After no luck with the Albanian government, Soraya then hoped that involving an international body like the United Nations might help. “All I knew was that the UN was responsible for upholding human rights. So, I went to Geneva in 2016 with several families whose children were also trapped in Albania,” Soraya explained.

In Geneva, she managed to meet with Ahmad Shahid, who was the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran at the time. “I told him my story, and he assured me he would help me meet my son. He invited me to attend a meeting he was having with the MEK at the UN building. But when he saw me at the meeting, he pretended he’d never met or spoken to me before.”

Individuals walking on the streets of Ashraf-3 camp near Tirana. They are banned from exiting the site or communicating with the outside world

Her experiences with organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) followed a similar pattern. She would initially be promised assistance, only to be ignored indefinitely.

Soraya’s disappointment does not end with international organizations. While she lives every day in pain thinking of her son living in a terrorist jail, Western governments – particularly the US, UK, France, and Germany – promote the terrorist group as freedom fighters striving to bring prosperity to Iran! The MEK is routinely brought to the U.S. Congress as well as European parliaments, honored, and at times awarded.

“I understand that these governments have political goals and are using the MEK to achieve them,” Soraya stated. “But still, how can they call these people democratic? The MEK is torturing its members physically, mentally, and sexually. And now, Albania shelters them while refusing to let mothers like me see our children.”

The future, and what it could look like

An Iranian court is currently conducting public hearings on the crimes committed by the MEK over the past four decades. Since Soraya’s son did not join the group voluntarily, he, along with nearly 2,000 others associated with the organization, is not on the list of defendants. However, Soraya believes that if the doors of the MEK camp in Albania open and people get the chance to leave, even some of those who joined willingly could return to Iran and live there safely. She says she knows many former members who have already come back and are now leading normal lives, just like any other Iranian citizen.
“I doubt any other government would be this forgiving toward people who took up arms and fought against their own country,” she said, referring to the MEK’s alliance with Saddam Hussein during Iraq’s invasion of Iran in the 1980s. “Yet, based on what I’ve learned over the years, Iran’s government has pardoned many of them.”
By the end of our interview, Soraya looked tired and hopeless, a state that also characterized her 24-year search for her son. “I just want to hear my son’s voice one more time. Is that too much for a mother to ask for?”

By Sheida Sabzehvari

The post How the MEK abducted my son – and Albania looked away appeared first on Nejat Society.

Asked about his activities as a member of the MEK, he explains how he served the group as foreign affairs agent who used to travel across the world. However, he was always under the group’s cult-like monitoring system.

Based on his testimonies, although he was not isolated at Camp Ashraf, Iraq, Khodabandeh was not allowed to visit his family including his daughter who was based in London.
He also told Tehran Times the process that ended with his arrest and extradition to Tehran and eventually his defection from the MEK. The foundation of Nejat Society was one of his achievements after he was released from Evin Prison. He explained about this humanitarian act.

The interview has been published in three parts on Tehran Times website. This is part two.

The post Tehran Times Interview with Ebrahim Khodabandeh- Part2 appeared first on Nejat Society.

Mehdi has spent nearly fifteen years of his life in the captivity of the People’s Mojahedin Organization (MEK); An organization that had not even allowed him to make a short phone call with his family in these years. This is completely unbelievable and digestible for me, in a world where technology and communication have reached the peak of development.

After a few moments of the call, Mehdi’s mood calmed down a bit. He said to his mother with passion: “I miss you, mother!” I wish even if I have a day left in my life, I can hold you in my arms, like the days when I was by your side and you were waiting for me to come home from work and eat lunch together.

This bittersweet call is not only a reminder of Mehdi’s personal sufferings, but also expresses the pain and suffering of thousands of families whose loved ones are trapped in this inhuman sect. A sect that not only violates humanity, but also violates people’s basic rights, such as the right to communicate with their families.
This is the first organization in the history of the world to commit such a blatant violation of human rights. But what I cannot bear is the silence of politicians and the international community, especially my country, in front of these crimes.

To all the mothers whose children, spouses or parents are caught in this cult, I say: you are not alone. Your suffering is the suffering of all of us. Let’s be the voice of those whose voices are not heard. Maybe the day will come when no mother would have to miss a child that was taken from her.

Edona Hunda, a member of Nejat Society Albania

The post Let’s be the voice of MEK hostages mothers appeared first on Nejat Society.

Mothers like Soraya Abdollahi, who are symbols of maternal love and resistance to the Rajavis’ blatant oppression, stand against the various vindictive labels the MEK puts on them and insist on their fundamental right to contact their beloved children.

On the other hand, their children are under pressure from the cult-like dictatorship of the group leaders to forget their family, to consider their family as enemies, and even to consider their mothers –who cry out with tearful eyes to see them– as mercenaries. These Children were even brought in front of the group’s TV cameras to curse their mothers.
The second group are mothers who are now in the group and whose children live in different parts of the world. In this group, there are mothers whose children are also in the MEK’s headquarters but there is no mother-child relationship between them. These children were child soldiers who were smuggled from Iraq to Europe and North America, and then smuggled back to the MEK’s headquarters in Iraq as teenagers. These mothers and their MEK children have no contact with each other except for one or two official visits a year.

After forced divorces, Mujahed mothers were forced to hand over their children to the smugglers of the MEK. Many of them are unaware of the fate of their children after long years of separation. Some have also been faced with their children’s revelations about the Cult of Rajavi. On the order of the group leaders, they have denied any maternal affection for their children. Amir Yaghmai and Mohammad Reza Torabi are among the child soldiers whose mothers have denied them in the group’s media and labeled them as mercenaries of the Iranian government!

The MEK, headed by Massoud Rajavi, is the defining line between being a mother and not being a mother. Today, if any MEK member leaves Camp Ashraf 3, they are welcomed with enthusiasm by their mothers, but each of the child soldiers who have left the group and whose mothers are still trapped in it, have been so much disliked by the side of their mothers that they could accept that there is no maternal love from them.

Mazda Parsi

The post Motherhood in the MEK vs Motherhood in free world appeared first on Nejat Society.

Aldo sullolari director of the 40-minute documentary made a speech after the screening:

Today we are gathered here to share a story, a story that feels the deep pain of mothers who face a pain that many of us cannot imagine. This film, entitled “Mother, Love, Separation”, tells us about the suffering of mothers in Iran, who are separated from their children for years, children who have joined the MEK terrorist organization.

This film is not just a depiction of suffering. It is a call for awareness, a message for all of us, especially for the Albanian public, to support these mothers and their children. Their pain, tears and suffering are evidence of a bitter reality, but our film also shows the power of dedication and conviction to bring back what has been lost.

During the filming in the Persian Gulf, we had the opportunity to experience deep events and emotions, which were skillfully described by our Albanian and Iranian activists. They bring a strong message of unity to the screen, showing that a mother’s love and strength are more powerful than any terrorist ideology.

Our film is a reflection of a sad reality, but also a hope for a brighter future. What we want is to create a feeling of solidarity, for all of us to be on the side of those who are suffering.

Through this project, we want to call for action. It is necessary to listen to the stories of these mothers and understand that each story is a cry for help. We cannot remain silent in the face of this tragedy. This is an opportunity to open a dialogue, to help those who are lost and to bring a light of hope into their lives.

Thank you for being here to support this film and the message it conveys. I hope we can all be inspired by these mothers’ stories and come together for a greater cause.

Thank you!

The post A call for awareness appeared first on Nejat Society.

The MEK terrorist group was founded in 1965 as an Islamist-Marxist group opposing the Shah. Soon after establishment, the group started its violent and armed struggle against the regime. At the time, the group was involved in liquidating the opposition along with its own members who were critics of the group. A short while after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the MEK came into serious conflict with the political system, which led them to enter an armed phase and assassinate Iranian officials and ordinary citizens. In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, the MEK sided with Saddam, enjoyed the financial and military support of the former Iraqi dictator, and continued carrying out its terrorist operations both against Iranian and Iraqi citizens.

It was during these years that the MEK’s leader, due to failure in his military attack against Iran, decided to drastically change his approach within the group and as a result, the group took on a more cult-like dimension which continues up to now.

The MEK is a cult of personality and acts based upon a certain hierarchy which emphasizes the concept of “Revolutionary Family”. The concept is not new; however, it became more prominent in 1989 within the framework of the “Ideological Revolution”. According to this framework, all male and female members of the cult are brothers and sisters. They constitute a family, which must remain obedient and loyal to its leader. Focusing on the group’s goals, which are set by the leader, and blind obedience to the leader are superior to any sort of family ties.

How the MEK behaves towards family members

Critics of the group reason that the way MEK treats families will in fact disrupt the dynamics of the family. Statements and memoires of the group’s defectors as well as analysis of the group’s historical records all verify the views of these critics and reveal that families are, to a great extent, negatively influenced by the MEK’s militant approach.

The most fundamental measure of the MEK against families was taken after the imposed Iran-Iraq war. The group’s leader blamed families for his humiliating defeat in war. In his opinion, loyalty to family has an inverse relationship with loyalty to the leader. Therefore, the process of forced divorces began. Children were separated from their parents and banished to Europe. All women were forced into marriage with Rajavi in a cult-like ceremony and marriage was banned afterwards. It must be mentioned that since the group’s presence in Iraq, any type of contact with families had already been forbidden. These limitations existed even after the group was relocated to Albania and they continue up to now. Overall, there are very strict rules regarding families in this group which have led to chronic emotional distress of members and disintegration of family ties.

Furthermore, evidence suggests that women in the MEK are sexually exploited. Leader of the group is said to enforce strict rules about female members by limiting their personal freedom and depriving them of the right to work and receive education. Former members of the group have reported gender segregation, limitations in veiling, prevention of marriage and hysterectomy within the group.

The children growing up in the MEK are also brought up in an unconventional and strict manner. Such actions severely affect children’s well-being and growth. According to irrefutable evidence, children were forcefully separated from their parents and placed under surveillance. They were sent to some European countries. Based on interviews with the group’s defectors in Europe, the MEK sent some of the children to families, who supported the group, in order to strengthen their ties with them and also to receive financial support from European charities. This money would later be spent on the military affairs of the group. Some of the children went through ideological training and some were sent to streets to collect donations from people. These children were taught to lie and say that their parents are political prisoners in Iran or have been executed to be able to attract people’s attention. Also, in multiple cases, the children suffered malnutrition and experienced sexual violence by their new family.

Although the group was expelled from Iraq and resettled in Albania, they still continue their strict policies about families. MEK defectors believe that family ties can seriously weaken or dismantle Rajavi’s group. That is why the group’s leaders are by no means willing to change their anti-family approach because any change could lead to a huge wave of defection and shocking revelations concerning the group’s practices.

Assassinating Iranian families

This cult-like strictness in dealing with families is only part of the story of how the MEK treats families. Since the 1980s, thousands of Iranian families have fallen victim to the group’s acts of terror. The MEK assassinated a significant number of Iranian citizens inflicting irreparable emotional and psychological damages. As their assassinations targeted both males and females from all walks of life, it is perfectly conceivable that loss of a mother or father would place family members, especially the children, under unrelenting pressure.

There are also many cases where the whole family were assassinated. For example, in Iranian northern province of Gilan, the MEK terrorist group assassinated a father named Shahgaldi Almasi along with his two young sons who were farmers. Another case is that of an Arab family called Beit Salem who were all on a motorbike when they were attacked by the MEK. The attack left the parents and their two young sons crippled for life.

Other methods of assassination that the MEK used were also unbelievably inhumane. There are many instances of breaking into a house and shooting the targets before the eyes of their families. For example, MEK terrorist went to a house in Mashhad and rang the bell. A young girl opened the door and they told her to call her father to come to the door. When her father arrived, the MEK terrorists assassinated him in front of his daughter. These crimes and other similar ones have caused a great deal of emotional damage to family members, especially women and children.

Now that the MEK has targeted families, it is very important to take serious measures to reduce the emotional damage caused by the anti-human acts of this group. International authorities should pay a visit to the impenetrable camp of this group in Albania and conduct a detailed investigation. The leaders of the group should stand trial for the crimes they have committed against Iranian families and citizens. The political approach of some countries opposing Iran has caused them to turn a blind eye to such behaviors that violate human rights. The media, if focused on the dark history of the group, can uncover the truth and set free all the people incarcerated in the group. Meanwhile, families of terror victims seek justice. The International Day of Family can be a good opportunity to take note of these people and take a step to reduce their pain forever.

Habilian Staff Writers

The post Destruction of family in the Rajavi’s terrorist cult appeared first on Nejat Society.

The inner world of the Mujahedin, if examined at all, is still a mystery to Western observers, and it is the Mujahedin’s deliberate policy that sustains it. For this reason, little importance has been given to this aspect of their organization. However, cult culture is one of the most dangerous forms of society. Firstly, because the most basic human rights deprive members of even the right to think. The Mujahedin have carried out forced marriages and later forced divorces, separated children from their parents, and placed them under the care of their supporters in various countries.

The MEK children

The sacrifices that each member of the group had to make were expressed in a series of “ideological revolutions” led by the group’s leader (Massoud Rajavi). The leadership called on members to disassociate themselves from any physical or emotional attachment in order to increase their “fighting capacity.” In the case of married couples, this stage of the “ideological revolution” required them to divorce their emotional ties with their spouses. Massoud Bani-Sadr reports on how this process took place .

during the “ideological meeting of” high-ranking and executive members “after the defeat of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization in Iran:

The first thing I had to do in Baghdad was watching the videotape of an ideological meeting for “executive and high-ranking members.” The meeting, called “Imam Zaman”, began with a simple question: “To whom do we owe all our achievements and everything we have?”. Rajavi did not claim to be the Imam of our time as I thought, but only said that we owe everything to the Imam of our time… The aim was to show that if there is more unity, we can reach Tehran. Our leader, as he was with the Imam of Time and God; He was willing to sacrifice everything he had (which was all of us!) To God, claiming that all he had in mind was to do what God wanted him to do. We were expected to conclude that there was no barrier between Rajavi and Imam Zaman. However, there was a barrier between us and him [Rajavi]… Which prevented us from seeing him clearly. This “barrier” was our weakness. If we recognized our weakness, we would see why and how we failed in Operation Forough Javidan (Mersad) and elsewhere.

Massoud and Maryam [Rajavi] had no doubt that the guardian in all our cases is our current wife.
The organization’s order for “mass divorce” caused a great deal of psychological distress and confusion. Massoud Bani-Sadr describes the atmosphere inside Camp Ashraf during this period:

The atmosphere of the camp was completely different… The misery was unceasing… Everyone seemed to be in the new phase of the “ideological revolution.” The only legitimate discussion was about the revolution and the exchange of relevant experiences.

Nothing else mattered. There was no outside world. . . Even poor single people had to divorce their weaknesses, without knowing what those weaknesses meant. Apparently, the answer was to divorce all the women or men they loved. Only later did I realize that the MEK was seeking not only a legal divorce but also an emotional or “ideological” divorce. In my heart, I had to divorce Anna [his wife], and in fact, I had to learn to hate her as a barrier between our leader and myself.
Rajavi announced at that meeting that as our “ideological leader” he had ordered the mass divorce of our spouses. He asked everyone to hand over their rings. It was the strangest and most disgusting meeting I had ever attended. It lasted almost a week.

Rajavi told his followers that the defeat of the Forough Javidan (Mersad Operation) was not a military mistake, but was rooted in the members’ thoughts about their spouses. Their love had weakened their will to fight. In 1990, all the women in the camp were ordered to get a divorce – and the women replaced their wedding rings with pendants on which Massoud’s face was engraved. The couples separated and their children were sent to “to be adopted” by MEK supporters in Europe.
In essence, the next phase of the MEK’s ideological revolution was one year after the divorce of the families to destroy family bonds completely. Under the pretext of the war in Iraq, Massoud Rajavi ordered that all children be sent from Iraq to Europe, the United States, and other countries. About 800 children were sent from Iraq to other countries and handed over to Mujahedin supporters in those countries.

Manuchehr Abdi

MEK commanders called on all members to expose sexual misconduct publicly. Manouchehr Abdi, 55, who also left the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO) in Albania, said, confessionals were held every morning. He says that even the feelings of love and friendship were illegal. “I have to admit that I missed my daughter,” she says. They would shout at me, they humiliated me, they said that my family was the enemy and that nostalgia for them was to strengthen the hands of the mullahs in Tehran.

Batool Soltani joined the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization in 1986 with her husband and infant daughter. At first, her family was able to live together, but in 1990, she says, she was forced to divorce and she abandoned her five-year-old daughter and new-born son, who had been sent abroad to be brought up by MEK supporters. Soltani claims that she has been forced to have sex with Massoud Rajavi several times since 1999.

In fact, the Ideological Revolution turned the Mujahedin into unusual and confusing creatures. The idea that made the MEK a cult stems from internal developments in 1985. Whatever the outcome of these issues, it is clear that the Mujahedin is not a normal organization.

Elizabeth Rubin, an American journalist, gave mysterious reports during her visit to the Mujahedin camp. She describes entering the camp, which was mostly made up of women:
You feel like you have entered the imaginary world of female worker bees. Of course, there are men around. About 50% of the soldiers are men. But as I turned around, I saw women dressed in khaki clothes and flowery scarves walking back and forth along the streets in white vans or army green trucks, staring forward, a little dazed or sometimes purposeful.
“The MEK is the only army in the world whose command corps is made up mainly of women,” said Elizabeth Rubin.
Many analysts, including Rubin, describe the MEK as a cult and point to the group’s loyalty to the Rajavis. Older women were reportedly forced to divorce their husbands in the late 1980s, and younger girls could not marry or have children.
“Rajavi liked to have women around him and reformed the command structure to replace men with women, this time calling it the ‘Constitutional Revolution,’” she said. He [Massoud Rajavi] was also politically savvy, adding a fascinating flavor to their public relations in the West.

In an interview with Elizabeth Rubin, 19-year-old Sahar says: “My mother was pregnant at the time of her arrest, and I was born in 1983 in Evin Prison. When I was one year old, my father was executed for supporting the Mujahedin. Now I drive a Cascavel (a Brazilian armored car). My mother is at another camp. This was one of the reasons I decided to join the army.
“Most of the girls I met grew up in Mujahedin Ashraf schools, where they lived apart from their parents,” Rubin said. Family visits were allowed on Thursday and Friday nights. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, many of these girls were deported to Jordan and then smuggled to various countries – Germany, France, Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where they were taken care of by Mujahedin supporters. When they were 18 or 19 years old, many of them decided to return to Iraq and fill the ranks of the youngest generation of Mujahedin. “Decided” is probably not the right word, though, because from the day they were born, these girls and boys were not taught to think for themselves, but to blindly follow their leaders. Nadereh Afshari, a former MEK member, told me, “every morning and night, children between the ages of 1 and 2 had to stand in front of a poster of Massoud and Maryam, greeting them and praising them.” Afshari, who was based in Germany and was responsible for receiving MEK members’ children during the Persian Gulf War, said that the MEK members did not accept her when the German government tried to attract MEK’s children to its education system. Many children were sent to Mujahedin schools, especially in France. Afshari continued: The Rajavis saw these children as soldiers of the next generation. They wanted to brainwash them and control them. This may explain the pattern of their story and life: a journey to power and enlightenment in the way of self-sacrifice inspired by the light and wisdom of Maryam and Massoud.

Amin Golmaryami

Amin Golmaryami is one of the children who was a victim of the ideological revolution in the Mujahedin and one of those who was separated from his family and sent to Europe.
In an interview with Amin Golmaryami, the German magazine “Dit” acknowledged that five pieces of evidence against the MEK had been upheld in a German court.

The court confirmed that what the MEK claimed to justify the smuggling of MEK children from Iraq to Europe in 1991 was not true. In fact, the group leaders did not want to save the children’s lives, but their goal was to destroy the family structure. The court found this to be perfectly acceptable, based on investigations and analyses by the journalist.
The court confirmed that Amin Golmaryami was a child soldier who was taken to Iraq by MEK agents, where he received military training based on available documents and the testimony of other former child soldiers.

The court confirmed that Amin Golmaryami did not visit his mother immediately after entering the Iraqi MEK camp (Camp Ashraf). It took him two weeks to meet with his mother in the presence of other female members who were watching them.
In fact, MEK agents promised Amin that they would take him to Iraq to stay with his mother for a short time and then they would return to Europe, but according to Amin and other child soldiers, they were not allowed to visit their parents for more than once a year in Camp Ashraf.

Amin Golmaryami came to Germany as a child. He says that when he was 15, he was taken from Cologne to Iraq with many other young people _ to a military camp run by an Iranian group called the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK/MKO). He is the first victim of this political cult to make his story public in his own name.

He rarely speaks German with an accent, yet occasionally uses words in his native language, Persian. They are not difficult to translate, they are more difficult to explain: Almaas-e Ensaani, for example, means “human diamond”. This is one of the main ideological concepts of the MEK that he fell into as a child, says Golmaryami: “The idea behind this is that everyone has a diamond inside them that has been damaged.” It is the person himself who is to blame for his desires – like the love for the family.

All this must be ignored. Only through loyalty to a leader can one be “cleansed.” This explanation is also recounted by other witnesses.

Amin Golmaryami was born in 1985 in the city of Abadan in southwestern Iran. His parents were former MEK members. In 1979, they and other opposition groups overthrew the Shah of Iran. However, the subsequent Islamic government did not allow the Mujahedin-e Khalq to have a share in the government and persecuted them. The MEK then carried out attacks on government employees and eventually fled into exile, most of whom fled to Iraq.

When a US-led alliance invaded Iraq in 1991 during the Second Gulf War, the MEK used the flow of refugees to send hundreds of children abroad. Today, the MEK says they did it to save them from bombs and war, but it was also to break the family structure and strengthen the fighting spirit. Amin Golmaryami and his two brothers Alireza and Hanif were there.
Amin Golmaryami remembers the journey in pieces. “My mother stood in front of the bus for a long time, crying and waving,” he said. They were taken to Germany. He and about 150 other children came to Cologne. Golmaryami was housed in a place in the Meschenich region, he recalls it as a dilapidated half-finished house. The children were there as young asylum seekers unaccompanied and under the care of Mujahedin-e Khalq staff and trustees. Ten of them slept in one room. Golmaryami says: I missed my mother very much. Some were beaten, and many had nothing to eat. Amin went to school and quickly learned German.

Most of the Iranian children were older than him and attended Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Cologne-Wieden. One of the teachers at the time recalled: The children were “happy and hardworking”. But there was also something fanatical about them. Some worshiped the leader Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam “like gods.”
He once stayed with a German school friend and was surprised that his parents both kissed him goodnight. “It was then that I realized my life was very different”, he says.

From the mid-1990s, some teachers noticed that the MEK children had suddenly disappeared from Cologne. 14-, 15-, and 16-year-olds suddenly did not show up for classes.

Amin Golmaryami says that in 1999, his 18-year-old brother Hanif also disappeared. Hanif ordered Amin and their third brother Alireza to go to a secret meeting point in Westfriedhof, Cologne, to say goodbye to each other. Hanif said: I am going to Iraq. His destination was the headquarters of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, a military camp called Ashraf. The cadres had promised him that he would meet with his mother there. Amin Golmaryami says that he was shocked and shed tears when he heard these words.

Hanif Golmaryami, who now lives in Canada, says he missed her mother badly at the time and longed for motherly advice and hugs. The MEK cadres had assured him that if he did not like Iraq, he could return in a few weeks, and he believed them.
Amin once again saw his brother Hanif in a propaganda video shown to him and other children by the cadres: Hanif was marching in a parade Iraq. Eventually, he was convinced that he should follow the same path as his brother Hanif, and eventually he and his older brother, Alireza, went to Iraq.

Amin was afraid that his whole family and all his friends would gradually leave him. To be forced to stay alone in Germany. He envisioned Iraq as a large holiday camp. He was originally a minor, and he says, “they manipulated me.”
Upon entering the camp, he decided to leave, but his brother stopped him. Little by little he adapted to the situation, woke up at 4 in the morning, marched, and learned to shoot and drive a tank. And two weeks later he met his mother while the women accompanying him were spying on him.

After that, he only had the opportunity to meet his mother once a year, and he gradually hated his mother. He says he still feels the consequences of not having a normal family.

Other children who were separated from their families in the MEK’s camp include Hanif Azizi. He grew up in a military camp in the Iraqi desert. His parents were soldiers of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Revolutionary Movement in Iran. After his father was killed in the war, Hanif, who was nine years old, was sent to Sweden with his brother. He is having a hard time adapting to the new country. For the first two years, they were with a family of Mujahedin supporters, but due to domestic violence and lack of love, the Department of Children and Adolescents removed them from the family and gave them custody to a Swedish family. As a teenager, he was in contact with the Mujahedin insurgent movement again. Eager to socialize and meet his mother, he went to Iraq to join the MEK. There he was brainwashed and decided to join the Mujahedin. But he was allowed to return to Sweden to settle some issues and to bring his younger brother back to the Mujahedin. As he waited to return to Iraq with the Mujahedin, talking to different people and thinking about what had happened to him, he realized that his decision to return to the Mujahedin in Iraq was not his own, but influenced by them. This is how he changed his mind and decided to stay in Sweden. He is now a police officer in Sweden.

The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK/MKO) is accused of separating hundreds of children living in the MEK’s camps in Iraq from their parents and sending them from Iraq to various countries between 1990 and the beginning of the 1970s. The number of these children is estimated between 700 and 900 people. By doing so, the Mujahedin deprived the children of their parents and destroyed the family structure. The Mujahedin Organization has never published any report on the fate of these children and the situation of many of them is unknown.

The Mujahedin is also accused of illegally returning dozens of the same children from various European countries to Iraq for several years by deceiving them and promising that these children could go to Iraq to see their parents. Their departure from Iraq has forced them into the army. Some of those children in the military now talk about what happened to them through interviews or memoirs.

Conclusion: About 700 to 900 children under the age of 1 to 17 were separated from their families under the pretext of the war in Iraq and the protection of children in the Mujahedin Organization and were sent to European countries and other countries.

During the distant years, many of the parents of these children lost their lives and were never able to see their children again.

Some of these children, wishing to see their parents again and being deceived by Mujahedin supporters, returned to the Mujahedin camp after many years and underwent special care and brainwashing. Some of them also saved themselves and turned their backs on this dreadful organization forever. The fate of some of these children is unknown. Although “liberation and equality of women’s rights” was both a political goal and a strategy in the MEK, it forbade women and mothers from their most natural right, namely motherhood and love, and for many years forbade women, children, and, of course, fathers. He tortured them with brainwashing and sheer obedience and gained the will and decision-making power.

To view the PDF file click here

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Nasrin and Heidar had two children, Hammed and Hamaad when they left Iran to join the MEK in Iraq. Under the order of the group, first, Heidar left his wife and two sons for Iraq and went there through Pakistan border. Then, Nasrin and Hamaad were smuggled to Iraq by the MEK agents. The MEK agent had coerced Nasrin to leave the six-year-old Hamed in Iran.

Heidar was in the MEK’s camp in Iraq when he talked to Nasrin on the phone, and he found out that Hamed was not with her. He shouted at the poor woman who was already mourning for her older son. “I shouted at Nasrin,” Heidar writes in his memoirs, “But I knew that it was not her fault. She was in that path because of me.”

Heidar Babaei and his three sons

Once, Heidar, Nasrin and Hamaad gathered in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, they could maintain their family center for a while. Heidar and Nasrin used to work in different units of the MEK army, Hamaad was kept in the buildings established for Mujahedin’s children. At night, they would stay with each other in their room in Eskan buildings.

In July 1988, Heidar took part in Forough-e Javidan, the MEK’s cross border operation against Iran, financially and logistically supported by Saddam Hossein. He was seriously wounded, hospitalized for several months. It took him a long time to be allowed to call Nasrin. Nasrin was crying, she could not believe her ears. She had been told by the commanders that her husband was killed.

Forough-e Javidan was a catastrophic defeat for Massoud Rajavi who had the illusion to capture Tehran in three days. He wanted to justify his failure not by his logical thinking but by blaming members for being preoccupied by wife and life!
Therefore, the order for forced divorce was issued. Heidar did not obey the order. He kept on seeing Nasrin and Hemaad. For a short period of time, they were the only family who would still go to Eskan to be together at nights. He had to walk a long distance in dark to reach Eskan. Nasrin got pregnant with her third son, Pooyan, but the MEK leaders did not let Heidar know about it. They forced Nasrin to stop the family visits.

Following the order, a lot of the MEK members announced their willingness to leave the group. It was not just a simple request to leave a normal group. In order to leave the cult-like structure of the group, members had to be indoctrinated, punished, imprisoned and if none of the tactics succeeded, they were surrendered to Iraqi authorities. Heidar was lucky to be able to gain a passport for himself and his family, but ultimately he had to leave Iraq without Nasrin and Pooyan.

A few months took Heidar and his second son Hamaad to reach Netherlands. They lived in refugee camps. At the time, Massoud Rajavi had issued his second order to totally collapse MEK families. This time, he had ordered the separation of children from their parents. Nasrin had to leave the two-months-old Pooyan to MEK human traffickers. They had taken him to Netherlands, but the MEK authorities did not want to give the boy to his uncle Siroos who lived there.

Heidar made efforts to get his little son back. The poor baby was left with a MEK female defector who wanted to use him to take refuge from Dutch government. His brother, Siroos could finally take the baby. When Heidar reached Netherlands and saw his son for the first time, named him Pooyan.

The single father and his two sons had to stay in a refugee camp for two years. He was then given a house by the government. His efforts to contact Nasrin in the MEK was totally futile. “Each time I tried to contact her via the MEK offices, she would call me in a few days and would insult me,” he recounts. “This was not my Nasrin, the love of my life. She was always polite; she would never shout at me. I was sure that she was under pressure by the MEK to make me stop looking for her.”

The next step for Heidar was the reunion of Hamed who had been left wandering among his dad’s and mom’s relatives in Iran, for six years. Heidar went to Turkey, he organized Hamed’s departure from Iran. He paid too much money to get Hamed’s passport to take him to his home in the Netherlands.

Now he was responsible for raising three sons who missed their mother very much. “My sons always miss their mother,” he writes. “Especially Pooyan who has never seen her. I was the only father who would take his son at school. Pooyan always witnessed other children whose mothers were waiting for them.”

Today, Heidar’s sons are grown up, but Nasrin is not allowed to visit them yet. She is still barred from the outside world in the MEK’s headquarters in Albania, called Ashraf 3. “I am sure that Nasrin has no access to the Internet,” Heidar writes. “She has not been able to read my memoirs, but the MEK has brought her to their TV channel to show me that she has no intention to leave the group, but I know that she is kept there against her will.”

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The story of Atefeh is so touching that her therapists could not help displaying compassion what is not so normal during the healing process. “How could she help me when she did not know which trauma she should work on?” Atefeh asked in an interview with the Iranian researcher Farah Shilandri.

Atefeh Sebdani published her autobiography, “My hand in mine” a few months ago in Sweden where she and her two brothers were smuggled by the MEK agents over three decades ago. Together with seven hundred children of the MEK, they had been separated from their parents and trafficked to Europe and North America under the order of Massoud Rajavi, leader of the MEK cult.
“The more I wrote, the calmer I got,” she told Shilandri. “But I also want to point out that there are many people who secretly contact me who are either defectors of the MEK, or are the children separated from their parents by the group, and they say that they are happy that someone has the courage to talk about this and in my opinion, this is a very important issue that should be raised. Many do not dare to speak out loud about this.”

As a survivor of the Cult of Rajavi, she clarifies why it is so difficult to dare to speak out, “I would like to point out is that we, the children of Mujahedin, have lost everything a person can lose, we have nothing more to lose. To the extent that we were not only deprived of our parents, but also erased our identity from our minds. They even planned our feelings, thoughts and beliefs. At first, it was difficult for me to understand this situation. Finding myself and finding my values was not easy for me, who had learned to deny myself, my character and my values.”

When Atefeh was 19, she left the foster parents who were members of the MEK and had imposed all types of child abuse against her, her two younger brothers and two other foster kids who were also children of Mujahed parents – a girl and a boy, the boy was later recruited as child soldier and sent to the MEK’s camp in Iraq, where he was killed. The killing of Hamid was one of the last traumatic events for the teenager, Atefeh.

To answer Shilandri about how her experience with therapists were, she says, “I have gone to different psychologists, but to no avail. I don’t want to raise myself up. But the fact is that my experiences and problems were so complex that psychologists did not know how to treat them. I visited for the first time for two phobias. But I did not get any results. The second time was after my foster brother was killed (as I said before, he and his sister lived in that house with us). My foster brother went to Camp Ashraf and joined the MEK, but he was killed during the Iraqi attacks on Camp Ashraf in 2011.”

According to Atefeh, the Mujahedin and the family who were in charge of her and her siblings were very happy and proud of his death which they called martyrdom. “But his death hit me hard,” she says. “This is why I went to the psychologist again on the recommendation of my colleagues. For two years, I went to counseling and psychoanalysis sessions every other week. I would talk, and the psychologist would just cry.”

Atefeh suggests that her book is like a statement to her that indicates that she stands by her belief. She believes that someone should write about what happened to children who have been victims of the Cult of Rajavi. “I consider it my responsibility to write and express the truth,” she says.

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Ali and his wife were forced to divorce. His initial resistance against this order did not work. His wife was finally separated from him. There is no married member in the MEK.

Their 17-year-old son was coerced to wear military uniform and their little daughter was taken back to Iran. Since then, they could hardly ever see each other. “During the twenty years of membership in the MEK, I could see my son four or five times, from long distance,” he recounts.

The group leaders wanted to hand the little girl to human traffickers to take her to Iran, but Ali refused. The leaders told him that he should scarify his daughter for the group cause. He promised them to get his daughter to Iran by his own and then turn back to Iraq.

After he left his daughter to his mother in Iran, he got back to Iraq, this time to save his son but it was not a simple process. He was not allowed to visit his son. In the MEK, family relationship was forbidden; leaving the group was considered treason. Breaking these rules would lead to punishment. “They didn’t show my son to me, and if I happened to see him, I would be under commanders’ control; we couldn’t talk or contact each other,” he writes in his official announcement for leaving the group. “Because any kind of family contact was considered against the organization’s ruling.”

However, Ali succeeded to talk to his son after the group was relocated to Camp Liberty, near Baghdad airport. Ali got sick but his son could manage to visit the UN officials in the camp. He was aided to leave the MEK and to immigrate to Europe.
The father got stuck in the MEK for about a decade more. He was not able to leave the group until last month. “As a dissident member, I was jailed in a room when the Albanian Police raided Ashraf 3 two months ago,” he writes. “When the Albanian police came to the camp for inspection, they locked me in the proper room where I was living. Two members watched over me so that I could not go to the police and ask for asylum.”

Finally, he could ditch his commanders on a day that they had come to Tirana to do some errands. He escaped the group and surrendered himself to Police. He was welcome. He joined Nejat Society Albania that aided him get back to free world.
“The life in the MEK was full of suffering; we were under constant suppression in the MEK,” he says. “I could not meet or call my children in all those 20 years but since I left the group I can talk to my son and his family every night.”

Ali Asghar Zamani had a family of four before their involvement in the MEK. Today each member of the family is in a separate place. His wife in in Ashraf 3. His son is in a European country. His daughter is in Iran, and he is looking for a new life in Tirana, Albania.

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